Saturday, January 30, 2010

A Visual Story about a Significant Object

I am thrilled to announce that New York Times Columnist (and author of one of my favorite books on branding) Rob Walker invited me to join him and project partner Joshua Glenn to participate in their Significant Objects project. Paraphrased from their website, the task is as follows: invite a writer to invent a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should -- according to their hypothesis -- acquire not merely subjective but objective value. They decided to test their theory on eBay.

Rob and Joshua purchase objects -- for no more than a few dollars -- from thrift stores and garage sales. A writer is paired with an object. They then write a fictional story, in any style or voice, about the object. And then suddenly, a rather unremarkable trinket is transformed into a significant object.

Each significant object is then listed for sale on eBay. The object. is pictured, but instead of a factual description the object's newly written fictional story is used. The winning bidder is mailed the significant object, along with a printout of the object's fictional story. Net proceeds from the sale have been donated to 826 National and as of today, over $1,290 has been contributed to this group of eight nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing.

In a few short weeks, www.debbiemillman.com is going to turn into a site for the book (there will still be a link to this blog. Armin Vit is designing the new site, and it will include sections on each chapter, and will also include the spoken word podcasts for the essays, a list of my readings from my book tour and even a workshop on "Visual Storytelling" that I am now conducting.

About Me

Debbie Millman has worked in the design business for over 25 years. She is President of the design division at Sterling Brands. She has been there for nearly 15 years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of global brands for Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Campbell’s, Colgate, Nestle and Hasbro. Prior to Sterling, she was a Senior Vice President at Interbrand and a Marketing Director at Frankfurt Balkind.
Debbie is President of the AIGA, the largest professional association for design. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine, a design writer at FastCompany.com and Brand New and Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2005, she began hosting the first weekly radio talk show about design on the Internet. The show is titled “Design Matters with Debbie Millman” and it is now featured on DesignObserver.com.
In addition to “Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design,” (HOW Books, 2009, she is the author of "How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer" (Allworth Press, 2007) and “The Essential Principles of Graphic Design” (Rotovision, 2008).